Young Researchers Workshop:
Kinetic and macroscopic models for complex systems

Modelling adipose tissue homeostasis

Diane Peurichard

Université Paul Sabatier

We introduce a two-dimensional IBM for the spatial organization of adipose tissue and the fate of the precursor cells. This first model may be useful in predicting how interactive cells with mechanical feedback between the fibre net- work and the differentiated cells orchestrate the complex decision making of the functional structure. Cells are modeled as growing spheres which can not over- lap and fibre elements as straight lines of fixed length. Cell and fibre motion is guided by the minimization of a global entropy, defined as a mechanical feedback between the two agents and regularly disturbed by various biologicaly-justified phenomena between them. We define adequate quantitative descriptors of the cell and fibre structures to compare the numerical simulations and biological data. Our model reveals that the self-organization of cells during adipogenesis into complex lobule-like structures can be obtained only considering the me- chanical force between fibres and adipocytes correlated to a reduced number of simple intern phenomena engaging few agents.